Mobile wireless communication networks have finite resources which are typically shared among multiple mobile devices that access different services. Such services may include, for example, video streaming and/or interactive messaging, e-mail, text messaging, web surfing, etc. Applications using different services can place varied demands on the wireless communication network. To address these demands, a network's capacity is often larger than the amount used at any given time, in order to provide an acceptable quality of experience for all of the users and their respective applications.
However, there continues to be an increasing demand on mobile wireless communication networks because of the increasing proliferation of mobile devices and increasing use of applications and services (e.g., video and music services). Mobile broadband (i.e., network access via cellular telephone tower and/or satellite link), in particular, has become overburdened, especially during certain times of the day. Because the available mobile broadband spectrum is non-renewable and limited, there is an increased motivation to make more efficient use of the full capacity of a network during peak use times and non-peak use times.
Thus, embodiments of the current disclosure relate to improving utilization of unused network capacity during peak use times and non-peak use times, and, more particularly, to utilization of unused network capacity for fulfilling prefetch requests.